The Digital Jersey
AI Debate 2027

Dr Laura Gilbert CBE is an independent adviser working to put AI to use in the public interest. She focuses predominantly on the UK public sector, but also works with tech startups and other governments, alongside board roles and public speaking. Her focus is on tech for the public good, using AI to build the society we all want to live in.

Laura is also a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics School of Public Policy and a Visiting Fellow in AI at Hertford College, Oxford. She advises UK public sector organisations including UKRI, ESRC, TPR, GBRX, Brent Council and OpenUK in the effective use of AI.

From March 2025 to October 2026 she was Senior Director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where she led the AI Innovation Lab and worked with governments worldwide to harness AI for more effective public services. From September 2020 to January 2025 she worked in 10 Downing Street as the founding director of 10DS, the government’s data science team, and of the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence, i.AI. Her teams delivered rapid, high-impact modelling to support policy decisions while pioneering AI solutions for public services. She was awarded a CBE for Services to Technology and Analysis in the 2024 New Year Honours.

Laura holds a doctorate in particle physics from the University of Oxford and undergraduate degrees from the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow both of the Institute of Physics and of the Institute of Analytics, and is fluent in seven programming languages. Before government she spent a decade as CTO of Rescon, a medical technology company she helped build from startup to acquisition, working across wearable technology, systems architecture and data security, and is named on four patents. Earlier in her career she worked in quantitative finance and in defence intelligence. Outside work, she has represented Great Britain seven times in savate kickboxing.

Dame Wendy Hall, DBE, FRS, FREng is Regius Professor of Computer Science, Associate Vice President (International Engagement), and is an Executive Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton.

With Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt she co-founded the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006 and is the Managing Director of the Web Science Trust, which has a global mission to support the development of research, education and thought leadership in Web Science.

She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 UK New Year’s Honours list and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

She has previously been President of the ACM, President of BCS, Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of the UK Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology, was a founding member of the European Research Council and Chair of the European Commission’s ISTAG, was a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance, and was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on the Digital Economy.

Dame Wendy was co-Chair of the UK government’s Artificial Intelligence Review, which was published in October 2017, is the UK government’s first Skills Champion for AI and is a member of the newly formed AI Council.

In May 2020, she was appointed Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute.

James is the CEO & Co-founder of PAIR. PAIR helps enterprises and Government departments drive AI adoption that leads to results. Previously James has driven AI adoption in high consequence settings – he was a founding member of 10 Downing Street’s data science team and CTO of a specialist military unit. He was made MBE for his work driving AI adoption in the military.

Stephan Thoma is an organisational strategic advisor and executive coach with over 30 years’ experience in People and Organisation strategy. After eight years as Google’s Global Learning Director, where he scaled a 180-strong global team as the company grew from 5,000 to 45,000 employees, he founded his own advisory practice in 2014. He has since partnered with 100+ organisations, from Meta and Microsoft to fast-growing scale-ups. Today his focus is AI workforce strategy, helping leaders adopt AI, redesign work and reskill their people. He also coaches site and tech leaders at a leading frontier AI lab.